Parties, social activity, and creator updates

Create or join a party

You must be signed in. Create a party from a published, playable story, or join with the invite code supplied by Mystrix. A party has one host and 2–20 places; a story may set a lower maximum. Mystrix uses each member's current account name in the roster. Party requests cannot supply a different display name.

An invite lasts 24 hours and works only while the party is active or already in session. Joining is refused when the invite expired, the party ended or filled, the story is no longer published, or the story does not allow late joining. Reusing an invite while you are already a member returns you to the same party instead of adding you twice.

The host can start or end the party and remove another member. Removing a member rotates the invite code. If the host leaves, another remaining member becomes host; the last member leaving ends the party.

Readiness, sessions, and voting

Members can mark themselves ready. Starting the party uses the story's published version and its authored party rules; party play does not bypass story safety, canon, or access checks.

Only current members can open or cast a ballot. Each ballot contains declared choices, and a vote accepts only one of those choice identifiers. The story controls whether voting is enabled for the branch, how long the vote remains open, when it resolves, and when tallies are visible. A client cannot override the timeout. An ended party cannot reopen voting, and a closed vote exposes its recorded result instead of accepting another ballot.

Follow creators and control profile visibility

Following a creator adds that account to your favorite-creators list and makes you part of the creator's update audience. You cannot follow your own account. Unfollowing removes that audience relationship; blocking is a separate safety action. Public story-imprint profiles use this same follow relationship without exposing their internal account administration.

A creator who sets their profile to private still has a public identity, avatar, published-story count, and public story bylines. Other people do not receive the private bio, tagline, banner, portfolio URL, account handle or rank badge in creator detail, directory, search, or favorite-creator results. The creator can still see their own complete profile while signed in.

Ratings, story feedback, and reports

These actions have different destinations:

• A rating is an integer from 1 through 5. You can rate a published story only after one of your

sessions for it has ended or completed. Submitting again updates your account's rating for that story; it does not add another rater.

• Story feedback goes to the story owner. You must have a session for the story. Choose positive,

suggestion, bug, confusion, or general feedback and enter up to 2,000 characters. A creator can resolve feedback only on a story they own.

• A report goes to moderation, not to the creator. Choose a listed moderation reason, one valid

story, creator, or asset target, and an optional explanation of at most 500 characters. More than three accepted attempts in five minutes are rate-limited.

The interaction quote shown around story play is an access-and-cost preview. It is not a public reader quotation and does not publish your feedback. None of these actions grants Mystrix Studio access or changes story canon.

Creator updates and live notices

Publishing a creator post and starting a live stream target active followers. A reader notice opens a reader-safe view: only published posts are readable, only live or ended streams are readable, media URLs must be HTTPS, and stream ingest credentials are never returned. A private creator profile does not turn published stories or deliberately published updates into private drafts.

If a push notice is missing, check the in-app notifications feed or the creator's current content; publishing and notification delivery are separate durable writes. If Mystrix cannot verify the current audience, it refuses publication or go-live before committing that action. Retry after the service becomes available. Do not rely on a push alert as the only record that an update exists.

A broadcast can remain readable through its delivered notification or a recorded purchase, even after your follow relationship changes. If its current audience must be checked and that check is unavailable, retry the visible service error. Viewing your own broadcast or unlocking it through a purchase does not by itself count as a delivered-recipient open.

Direct creator messages

Direct messages use Mystrix Studio conversations. They are separate from story-session transcripts and support conversations. A creator can open a new conversation only with a current follower; an existing two-person conversation can continue after that follow relationship changes. An unavailable follow lookup is an error; it does not count as an unfollow or authorize a new thread. You cannot message yourself or a nonexistent account. Message text is trimmed, must contain 1–5,000 characters, and unknown request fields are rejected.

Opening a thread marks it read, and Mark all read updates every conversation in that inbox. If a native send or read action fails, the app keeps the unsent reply and shows an error so you can retry. After the service saves a message, it keeps retry ownership until the matching Creator notification is durable. A response that says notification delivery is pending means the message is saved and the delivery worker will retry the alert; it does not mean the reader should send the message again.

Native thread views open on the latest message and display each page from oldest to newest. When a thread has more history, use Load older messages at the top; each use prepends the next older page without moving you back to the bottom. Also check the conversation directly when a message alert is missing; the committed message and its notification are separate durable writes joined by retry state.

Never send payment credentials, passwords, authentication tokens, recovery codes, or private support information through creator updates, feedback, reports, party interactions, or direct messages.